Many industrial processing lines utilize a strip material, such as a metallic strip material, as an input and require that the strip be continually fed thereto. As a practical matter, the strip is payed out from a coil until depleted. Because it would be highly undesirable to stop the processing line upon each depletion of a coil, vertically oriented strip accumulators, such as that shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,506,210, have been developed to receive strip from the input coil and hold or store a quantity of the same while at the same time paying out strip so held to the processing line. Such accumulators thus utilize the strip stored therein to permit the processing line to remain active during the time a new input coil is attached, as by welding, to the end of a coil which has just been depleted.
Often times it is possible that the processing line will utilize strips of varying widths throughout the normal working day or week. When a change of strip width is desired, using the type of accumulator of U.S. Pat. No. 3,506,210, a major alignment problem exists. Essentially all strip processing lines are designed to receive strip material along the center line of the width thereof. Thus, the strip which exits the accumulator must exit at a point such that the center line of the width of the strip is in line with the processing equipment. In order to accomplish this requirement, accumulators made in accordance with U.S. Pat. No. 3,506,210 dictate that the strip be fed thereto from the coil with the center line of the width of the coil at the proper position so that the strip will exit aligned with the processing equipment. This requires complex adjustments of the position of the coil each and every time the coil width is changed to assure that the coil is properly centered with respect to the accumulator. While adjustable uncoilers are available for this purpose, they are quite expensive and often prove difficult and time consuming to properly adjust.
Because of these problems, vertically oriented accumulators have been provided with angularly mounted take-out arbors, the angle of which can be adjusted, with the intention that the center line of the strip material leaving the accumulator will always be at the same location no matter what the width of the strip material. Such a device is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,885,748. As shown in that patent, the angularly mounted arbor carries a plurality of roll clusters, each of which consist of a plurality of small aligned rollers. The strip material rides on these rollers in a helical path around the arbor, and the angle of the arbor is adjustable to maintain the center of the strip in the same location irrespective of its width.
While accumulators having the adjustable arbor of U.S. Pat. No. 3,885,748 have been quite successful and a mainstay in the industry, they are not without their problems. Since the rollers of the roll clusters are fixed to the arbor, when it is angularly adjusted, the strip does not track at exactly 90.degree. to the rollers. This can cause the strip material to drift slightly from its intended course, which drifting not only can slightly misalign the center of the strip from its intended course, but can also scuff or otherwise mar the strip material as it tends to slide along the edges of the rollers. While such could be eliminated by manually adjusting the angle of each of the rollers in each of the several roll clusters to conform to the angle of the arbor each time the arbor is adjusted, such would be so time consuming so as not to be at all practical.
More recently, horizontally oriented accumulators have begun to become popular. In these devices, rather than have an arbor extending outwardly from a vertically oriented frame, the arbor extends upwardly from a horizontally oriented frame. The take-out arbors currently being employed for this type of equipment are highly unacceptable. The strip material exiting from these arbors has its flat, width dimension vertical and is moving upwardly. In order to be received by the processing line, the strip must have its flat, width dimension parallel to the floor and thus it must be twisted 90.degree.. In order to accomplish this twist, a linear distance is required, which can be substantial and which is dependent on the width and thickness of the material. As the arbors of this equipment direct the material upwardly, the elevation of the material path is greatly increased. Since the material cannot be twisted until it has reached its peak, and since the material path cannot be altered due to its angularity to the floor, much valuable floor space is utilized to allow the strip to first move upwardly and then be twisted for proper orientation with the processing line.
Thus, the need exists for an arbor which can be utilized both for a vertical accumulator and a horizontal accumulator, and which can solve the problems existing in both types of devices.